How to Date a College Graduate
by Veterization
Summary: Derek/Stiles AU. Part of the "How to Date Your Best Friend's Brother" series as a timestamp set two years in the future. There is prom, graduation, and a very awkward confrontation.


_Disclaimer_: I do not own Teen Wolf.

* * *

_A/N:_ SO, this is now a timestamp of my How to Date Your Best Friend's Brother series. If you haven't read that, this one probably won't make too much sense. I was simply overwhelmed with all of the support I was showered with regarding that story and its universe and how many people wanted to see more, so naturally, I aimed to please and churned out some more. I'm thinking of writing more sometime in the future set in the past or in Scott's POV, so this isn't the last of this series.

Anyways, this story takes place two years after the last, with Stiles graduating and Derek working on his master's degree.

* * *

The best thing, by far, of not keeping secrets from Scott—namely, the fact that he's going out with his grumpy older brother—is the fact that Scott is the best cover ever.

He's quote _hanging out with Scott at Allison's place_unquote for all parents that are asking where he is tonight, even though Stiles knows that never would he actually agree to being the awkward third wheel on one of Allison and Scott's dates and it certainly wouldn't turn into an all-night sleepover bonanza.

Needless to say, it fools Stiles' father, who is up to his elbows in a burglary case, and Scott's mother gets too doe-eyed and misty in the face whenever Scott talks about going out to see Allison again since after two years, she's now convinced that they're meant to marry in the same place her grandparents wed in the oldest church still standing in Beacon Hills, so Stiles is free as a bird on a Friday night that, three years ago, he'd be spending alone at home watching _That 70's Show_.

He's actually at Derek's dorm, a place he's actually gone to enough to have established that at least two of his jackets are draped over hangers in Derek's closet and a tiny tube of travel toothpaste is under the sink in case he spends the night there. Stiles would freak out about the idea of where these implications might ultimately take him, like the idea of him and Derek living together for real to share all of their laundry and debt and dishes after school is officially over for them both, but he's too busy being psyched about being in a college dorm to get frisky with his boyfriend to actually dwell on the semantics.

College campuses are, in a nutshell, totally _awesome_. He visits now and again when Derek's stuck writing term papers over breaks or when Stiles can convince Scott to cover for him while he ducks out of everyone's sight, and even though he might not be saddled with all of the rigorous work that all the college kids who recite vocabulary while they walk up and down the halls and keep textbooks in their purses at all times like emergency batteries clearly are, he knows that college life is definitely the life for him when he gets there. He loves the mini fridges, the whiteboards tacked on the doors, and the fact that someone is drunk at least twenty-five percent of the time.

The only thing he isn't fond of is the way that Derek might as well replace Stiles with his work desk as it's very much a contender for being in a committed relationship with Derek, as the guy studies and researches and reviews like he's studying to become the next Czar or build a jetpack that will work as an efficient mode of transportation—a cause that Stiles will admit has his full support if Derek's pursuing it—because he's in the middle of earning his master's degree. He doesn't do much studying of mythology anymore in favor of morphing his studies more toward the regions of crime, something Stiles has always encouraged since he was ten simply because Derek has the icy glare of death that would cause criminals to stop dead in their tracks without the influence of a gun aimed at their hearts. He runs like an Olympian and can flip a guy dead on his back in under three seconds if someone tries to aggressively accost him, all stunts Stiles has seen happen multiple times on the cop shows that his father sometimes enjoys mocking on his nights off. He's since suggested the idea of pursuing a line of justice on the force to Derek, an idea that Derek's actually latched on to.

"I'm sure glad you're over there studying instead of having sex with me," Stiles drawls innocently from where he's camped out on Derek's bed in his pajama pants, slung low on his hips just to act as a siren song that will ultimately persuade Derek to abandon his fiftieth page of notes and screw his boyfriend. "So one day you can have a super fancy job that will pay all the bills while I sit home and grow plants."

The desk lamp, shining directly on at least three textbooks propped open at once, doesn't flicker off. Derek continues pouring over his work like the fastidious bastard he is, going with a noncommittal, "hmmmm," as his response while Stiles fingers the drawstring of his pants and hums.

"Maybe I could get a bird. Or a ferret. Ferrets are pretty cool. I'm thinking dog or cat is too traditional for us. We're kind of crazy."

"Hmm," Derek says again, pen stuck in his mouth, and it's such a tantalizing sight that Stiles pushes himself from the mattress and wraps his arms around Derek's shoulders from behind, peering at the petite handwriting in front of him stretching all the way to the bottom of an illegally large piece of notebook paper. He gives up trying to decipher Derek's scrawl after a moment's skimming and decides instead to focus his efforts on leaving warm, open-mouthed kisses down the tendon on the side of Derek's neck. He licks over the shell of his ear just like he knows Derek likes, teasing one of his weak points when he bites down gently on the flesh of his neck. Derek shudders and drops his pencil. Stiles scores himself a point in the war raging against Derek's interminable mountain of homework.

"What do you think about leaving Mr. Math here to wallow in solitude while you and I become fractions? You on top, me on bottom?"

Derek cocks an eyebrow and looks over his shoulder. a hint of amusement on his face at Stiles' attempts to make arithmetic raunchy. "Did you just compare yourself to a denominator?"

"I got more dirty math jokes in my noggin, baby, and I'm prepared to use them as a weapon." Stiles warns, discreetly sliding Derek's shirt out of the way and trailing his kisses down the exposed sliver of skin of his collarbone.

"I give up," Derek concedes, pushing away from his desk and wrapping Stiles up in his grip, manhandling him unceremoniously on top of the bed sheets and crawling on top of his hips. He cups Stiles' cheek and kisses him, the flavor of black coffee sliding into his mouth when Derek swipes his tongue over his lips. For the rest of the night, Stiles makes sure that Derek forgets all about numbers and math and homework and even the creation of jetpacks.

* * *

"You smell so much like Derek's cologne I sort of want to throw up," Scott comments through furrowed eyebrows while he gets up in Stiles' business and sniffs at his shirt before lacrosse practice. "It's a miracle mom doesn't notice that you're boning her son."

"Uh, Scotty, _you_didn't notice until you walked in on us trying to get to third base," Stiles points out, never so grateful that his best friend is slow as a caterpillar trudging through molasses while he wrangles his shirt from his chest and shimmies into his jersey instead. "I think lack of observational skills might run in the family."

"Whatever, man," Scott dismisses. "The day she finds out it's your nuts on the line, not mine. Hope your precious observational skills survive the damage."

* * *

"I'm not sure if you're as upset about the fact that I'm no longer jailbait as I am," Stiles garbles around a spoonful of his sixth consecutive bowl of chocolate ice cream, a good dollop of his mouthful of the treat dribbling down his chin. Stiles effectively—and happily—feels like a small child again despite the fact that he's officially eighteen. "Because I am. Does the fact that I'm no longer illegal make me less irresistibly forbidden?"

Derek smirks around his own spoonful—somehow Stiles knew beforehand that Derek would be the type to choose the most boring ice cream flavors of them all, vanilla, and not even the French kind—of ice cream and squeezes Stiles' knee under the table of the gelato shop. Across the café, an elderly woman with a face like a squeezed lemon sourly eyes the way Derek's palm slides up his thigh and Stiles sourly eyes her back until she retreats her glare to her bowl of sorbet. He feels a small surge of pride that he's become one of those homosexuals that offends ethical senior citizens and he's no longer an experimenting teenager worth dismissing in the face of homophobic critics because he's simply going through a youthful phase that holds no harm over the integrity of modern marriage. Stiles wonders if this is what growing up means, because this he can handle easy as pie.

"You do fine without being illegal," Derek tells him, hiding his smile around his spoon. Stiles flashes him a cheeky grin and drags his finger through Derek's scoop of steadily melting vanilla, licking it from his fingertip. Derek's reaction as he watches the flicker of Stiles' tongue is clearly enough of a distraction that Derek doesn't reprimand Stiles for getting his germs in his bowl of food.

"And I guess this does take the felony off your back," Stiles points out. "No more prison if my dad catches you in bed with me."

"I'm so glad," Derek comments dryly. A moment later, he's sticking his spoon, piled with a mouthful of vanilla ice cream, in Stiles' face. Stiles licks it off obediently.

"Did we get married?" He says when Derek pulls the spoon away and Stiles barrels through the sudden brain freeze. "Because that was awfully cute."

"Shut up," Derek says promptly, squeezing his knee again. "When does the birthday boy want to move to dessert?"

"So this isn't dessert?"

Derek smirks. It looks so much like a Cheshire grin of naughty mischief that Stiles feels like he's looking into a mirror for a good few seconds before he beams with pride over the thought of having rubbed off on Derek so much over the past two years that he's now a veritable college graduate prankster. The title is rather catchy, but Stiles has little time to contemplate it when Derek's thumb grazes over his groin through the confines of his jeans and Stiles promptly drops his spoon with a clatter.

They walk through campus in quite a rush, Derek's hand on the low of his back and his fingertips slipped past the waistband of his boxers to discreetly brush over the curve of his ass and Stiles booking it toward Derek's dormitory all the while. He winks to the prude of an old lady on the way out of the ice cream shop, all but grabs Derek's hand and teleports his way to Derek's bed, and next thing he knows he's stripped down to nothing but his smile crammed in Derek's shower.

He knows that college students hate the showers, how there's barely room for one person let alone too, but that also happens to be the exact reason that Stiles loves them. There's not a lick of room between their bodies when Derek has Stiles pressed against the shower tiles, spray from the showerhead hitting both of them like pellets of heat that neither of them bother turning off when the warmth becomes too much. He twists away from the torrent of water and wraps his legs around Derek's waist when they first tumble into the shower through a frantic touch of lips and tangling of tongues, Derek's erection pressed against Stiles' hip and only making him more eager for Derek's touch.

They kiss, lips wet and slippery while the water pours down Derek's back, his own shoulder blades sliding against the squeaky tiles behind him, and Stiles thinks it's a personal reflection of just how much his making out has improved since he first start doing the saliva salsa with Derek years ago when Derek keens low in his throat and finds purchase on Stiles' hips in response to the fervency of his kiss. Stiles doesn't waste a second, never does when his time with Derek is ultimately limited and somewhat maddeningly forbidden when it comes to the public and Derek's mother and his father, and lets his hands roam over every untouched inch of Derek's skin, muscles moving under his fingertips while Stiles explores all the places he's missed the past few days.

"We gotta figure out a way to do this more often," Stiles breathes through his nose while he peppers kisses frantically down Derek's shoulder and tries not to come then and there while Derek squeezes his ass. He's officially eighteen, no longer young and nimble and excusable when he comes all over himself after six strokes and a particularly lustful growl from Derek's throat, and is determined to make his birthday shower sex last longer than a few wet, hot, gorgeous minutes. "Because I seem to have withdrawals when I stay away for too long."

Derek is about to say something in response when Stiles kisses him hard on the mouth, presses him against the tile, and slithers down his body, fully prepared to slip on the puddle of water streaming down the shower drain on the trek downward but somehow making it in once piece when he kneels between Derek's thighs and pushes them apart, leaning forward to lick over the head of his erection.

There's a steady spray of steaming water cascading right over his face and into his mouth, but Stiles decides to close his eyes against the incoming droplets and grin and bear it for the sake of the noises that proceed to fall from Derek's mouth and the way his fingers fist at Stiles' head when he takes his length into his mouth and sucks at the tip, tongue digging into the slit and licking up to the base. He's learned over the years that he likes to please, similar to the way he used to buy Lydia valentines and candy and even volunteer to do her homework when she wouldn't spare him second glances in the hallway, except the difference with Derek is that he rewards him for every little second of pleasure Stiles awards him with. He groans and pets Stiles' cheek and then gives him back twice as much as Stiles gives him with even more vigor like he's constantly in a state of awe that he has Stiles in his bed and Stiles wants to be there.

Stiles licks and sucks and throws out every trick in his arsenal that he's learned since he first became a professional in sucking dick with Derek as his mentor, hands squeezing Derek's hips while Derek tenses and quakes beneath him like he's undone under the influence of Stiles' tongue in a way that he never unravels when he's fully dressed and sitting at his desk concentrating on his reading or chatting with Scott. Stiles is truly proud that he's the one and only person who sees Derek at his most vulnerable and can make him so. He takes in as much of him as he can in his throat when suddenly Derek lets out a low moan and taps Stiles urgently on the shoulder to warn him of his imminent orgasm, so Stiles takes that moment to pull off, lick his lips, and grin up at Derek.

"Want to come inside me?" He offers, grin growing at Derek's answering groan. He stands up once more and braces his hands and cheek on the wet tiles, waiting for the sensation of Derek's soapy fingers rubbing and teasing his entrance. Instead, Derek molds himself against the curvature of Stiles' back and murmurs in his ear over the noise of the water.

"I have something else in mind," he admits, swiveling Stiles around and slowly, tantalizingly slowly, starts stroking Stiles' erection. Stiles feels his knees buck a little and knows that he'd agree to anything Derek propositions to him right now, feeling totally safe and simultaneously at the mercy of Derek's palm sliding up and down his cock.

"Does it involve us both coming," Stiles groans, and Derek chuckles.

"That's the plan," he says, so Stiles is pretty much on board already. "It's your birthday, so I thought I'd give you something special." He leans in until his lips brush Stiles' earlobe. "Me."

"Is this—is this an exclusive ownership clause? Do I get a piece of writing now saying that you're no longer on the meat market?" Stiles asks, prying open one eye that happened to flutter closed in languorous bliss when Derek's fingers starting pumping his shaft.

"You to _fuck _me, Stiles."

Stiles blinks and stares hard at Derek's face, wet hair mussed in all directions that will dry like he's been electrocuted by several bolts of lightning and lips red and wet, partly from the showerhead and partly from what can Stiles can only assume is the residue of his own saliva. Stiles tightens his hold on Derek's arms.

"Really? As in—you're the denominator?"

Derek's smile wipes away in favor of a slightly sterner expression, like this is no time to bring arithmetic into the situation and attempt to give it a sensual twist, and Stiles gets the hint. He grabs Derek by the cheeks, kisses him hard, and nods.

"You want to?"

"Yeah, yeah," Stiles says, nodding frantically as the idea starts to form in his head—Derek panting underneath him, fingering Derek open for the first time, Derek rutting against the pressure of Stiles' cock sliding into him—and grabs urgently for the knob to turn off the shower with fingers that slip and slide like butter. "On the bed, ready, set, go."

It doesn't take very long to get fired up after they abandon the shower without a hint of washing or cleansing in mind, bottles of shampoo forgotten on the shower rack. Stiles attacks Derek's body with gusto that seems to come to life inside him like throwing alcohol into a fire, not bothering to ignore the sparks that awaken—prominently in his crotch—when he first gets his hands on Derek's chest, wet and warm from the shower that neither of them bothered toweling off from, while knowing that he's very much in charge.

He's been in charge in the past too. Now and again he'd command Derek to suck him off or decide he'd ride Derek's cock rather than have him do all the hard work all on his lonesome, but now, a surge of power and a thrill of dominance surges through him like he's finally learned how to use his hands for the first time. He takes in the sight beneath him—Derek laying open and trusting on the his bed while Stiles straddles him and takes in the view to forever memorize and come to back to nostalgic rainy days—and is officially ready to get this show on the road.

Derek seems equally amused and erotically charged at Stiles' taking to being on top, pulling Stiles onto his lap and kissing him hard. Stiles leans into it but doesn't get distracted from the task at hand, the task of taking care of Derek in just the same way he did for Stiles two years ago during Stiles' first time taking anything up his ass that wasn't required by doctor's examinations, slow and hard and gentle and frantic all at once.

When his hand slides down to Derek's thighs after taking a brief detour near his chest to rub over his nipples and the defined lines of his stomach and he scrapes his hand blindly under Derek's bed for the familiar bottle of lube, Stiles knows that half the dorm and Barack Obama plus a few of his dead relatives marching into Derek's room wouldn't be able to distract him from the way Derek responds to Stiles' slick finger pressing up against his entrance, which is most certainly saying something about someone with a case of ADD as bad as Stiles'. He takes his time easing his fingers in to the knuckle, stretching Derek and also reveling in being able to torment him when normally he's the one panting for mercy while Derek has his wicked way with him. He presses against his prostate and even rubs against it in teasing intervals while Derek barks at him to hurry up or he'll just do it himself, warnings that Stiles takes heed of due to his own mounting impatience.

When he pushes into Derek for the first time, he's positive that for a miniscule second he floats up to heaven, experiences vivid, celestial hallucinations, and then dances with fairies on puffs of clouds of cotton candy before he returns back down to earth where he's gripping Derek's swiveling hips and sliding into him. The first few words his mind can come up with are _good_ and _great_ and _fucking magical_, and now, _now _Stiles knows what bodies are completely for, because as great as it is to be on the receiving end of this treatment when Derek's thrusting into him at a relentlessly addictive pace, this is pretty brilliant too and he knows his dick would agree.

Derek doesn't seem to mind either, which makes it all the better for Stiles, and Stiles curls his fingers around Derek's length to turn him just as needy as Stiles gets when Derek starts ramming into him without reserve, fucking him like he means it until Stiles is nothing but a slobbering, writhing mess of incoherent begs for him to go faster, go harder, go rougher. Stiles pushes all the way in and takes a moment to breathe and let Derek get accustomed to the sensations until Derek grabs Stiles' wrist and all but growls at him to keep going and move, after which Stiles is more than eager to comply and pick up a rhythm with his hips.

Derek is, quite simply, every gay and straight person's dream when Stiles thrusts into him, hips snapping forward in time with Stiles' rhythm and throat not failing to verbalize all praises and groans of encouragement along the way that his brain doesn't bother to filter through. He looks flushed and sweaty and completely at Stiles' utter mercy while Stiles keeps the tempo of his thrusts up and struggles to keep from falling over the brink of pleasure that's rapidly turning into a gaping hole that Stiles will soon trip directly into, and he's completely buried in Derek and crying out when he comes.

After Derek follows suit shortly after. It takes every ounce of Stiles' strength to pull out of the delicious heat that he was comfortably slotted into and pull out, instead draping himself directly over Derek's chest and idly nipping at the skin of his shoulder. Derek pulls him close to his body and curls his arms around his hips like even the slightest breath of room between their bare skin is unacceptable.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Stiles swears directly to the heavens while he stares at the ceiling and enjoys the last few tingles of pleasure coursing through him. They've made a mess, all over Derek's stomach and his sheets, but right now feels like the last time to worry about hygiene or stains. Stiles slings a leg over Derek's thighs and grins in a way that only a guy who just got satisfyingly laid can. "Happy birthday to me."

"Who says the birthday's over?" Derek purrs, and just like that, Stiles is ready for round two.

Ultimately and astonishingly, by the time it ends and midnight chimes, Stiles' eighteenth birthday ends up trumping his eleventh and all time favorite, where his presents included a remote-control helicopter and a trampoline and his father let him eat ice cream for breakfast, which is definitely saying something.

* * *

Not without fail, Derek improves in his job of being an older brother.

It takes him a good sixteen years to start getting on the right track, just as it takes Scott sixteen years to stop irritating the hell out of his older sibling, but at one point—Stiles likes to take the credit for their harmony—they reach a startlingly peaceful truce that no longer makes their interactions all seem awkward or uncomfortable and manages to bring them closer. Stiles likes to believe that the cause of this was their common interest in Stiles, which quite frankly, could draw any two people together to bond.

Even though he knows perfectly well that Scott will spend an entire afternoon trying on one secondhand tux after another or piecing together dress pants with suit jackets that match in color and size and then spend the entire ride home trying fruitlessly to brainstorm over how to fix the tears, rips, and stains in the clothes he's bought, Derek drives in from campus just to pick up his younger brother and take him shopping for prom. Stiles promises to reward him with sex and food later for his good Samaritan behavior.

Stiles stays behind, mostly because he wants to see if Derek and Scott can survive a few hours in each other's company in a mall without one of them resorting to public violence or a call to their mother thoroughly explaining why the other brother is as _impossible _as he is and telling on each other's behavior without Stiles being around to step in to mediate the peace, and also because he doesn't want to stroll through hundreds of rows of suits that might have been in vogue a good few decades ago or worn by who knows what body when he could be at home in his pajamas. He stays at home marathonning Discovery Channel documentaries with a bowl of Cheetos in his lap when, two hours later, his phone buzzes with an incoming call.

He's already ignored a handful of Scott's texts, all ranging from _your bf has no sense of style_ to _you lucky bastard can't believe your dad is buying you a new suit_ to even _Derek does nothing but talk about you save me now_, but when Derek's number flashes on his screen clearly crying out for help so Stiles can listen to him vent about Scott's fussy attitude toward picking a simple pair of gentleman's shoes to keep his frustration from boiling over into destruction of public property, Stiles has mercy and picks up.

"How's the prom shopping going?" Stiles asks cheerily into the phone around a mouthful of Cheetos. "Have you picked out Scott's make-up yet?"

"I hate you so much," Derek hisses into the phone, and he sounds hushed and irate like he's currently ducked behind a dressing room while Scott changes. The image is more amusing than Stiles likes to admit. "This is why I didn't go to prom."

"Just because you hate social situations doesn't mean that this isn't Scott's time to shine," Stiles tells him, and he can practically see Derek roll his eyes in his mind's eye. "He's got a pretty girl to impress."

"Then maybe his best friend is the one who should help him pick out his suit."

On the television, an enormous humpback whale swims by while a soothing, elderly narrator starts discussing the advantages of its behemoth size. "That can't be a real whale," Stiles breathes in awe, and then snaps his attention back to his phone call. "No thanks, Derek, I'm good at home."

"Who are you going to prom with?" Derek asks suddenly, voice piqued in a tone of forced casual flippancy like he's pretending hard that he doesn't mind that Stiles is going to the dance without him, undercurrent of anger momentarily swept away.

"Uh, obviously, you are going to bust in at the last moment when they play _Save the Last Dance for Me_and sweep me around in a few circles."

"_What_?"

"Dude, are you kidding me?" Stiles asks mid-Cheeto, attention riveted away from the whales for a moment. "You're a gay man and you've never looked up that scene from _Queer as Folk_?"

"What."

"You should be ashamed of yourself," Stiles shakes his head, and he doesn't have the wit to come up with something better. He's as upset as Derek is—well, maybe a little more, because being stuck in a sweaty gym covered in glitter and pounding music and the smell of poorly suppressed teenage hormones is an evening Derek gets to escape from while Stiles has to endure all of it in order to efficiently complete his childhood—that he isn't going to his senior prom with his boyfriend because their relationship is on the down low lest a goody-two-shoes teenager sees a grown man grinding against the sheriff's son. When they had first begun going out, Stiles had been excited about the idea of hiding behind the eyes of the parents and making out in dark corners like they were in the throes of passionate forbidden love, but now the idea of spending all night dancing with himself and bobbing along to the DJ while snuggly couples surround him like a vortex of inescapable PDA is more than a little depressing.

Derek wrenches him out of his thoughts a moment later, completely unaware of Stiles' mental turmoil. "Stiles, he's been in the dressing room for way too long. He might have strangled himself with his tie."

"Hey, here's a crazy idea," Stiles proposes off-handedly, completely breezing by whatever complaints Derek was about to drum up about his brother's inability to hustle. "What if we screw the law and sneak you into prom anyway? Pretty sure we can disguise you. I have lots of Halloween masks and potato sacks you could wear on your head."

"Stiles, you know we can't," Derek murmurs, and a moment later his voice takes a sharp turn for the furious and abruptly roars through the receiver straight into Stiles' ear. "_Scott!_ Just pick a suit, for god's sake! I _will_ leave you in this mall!"

* * *

Prom ends up being kind of awesome even without Derek.

For all his griping about having to go to the largest dance of his vanishing high school career solo when he has a perfectly fine boyfriend who could easily go as his date if he wouldn't be a few years too old to attend prom unless he would sign up to be a chaperone shadowed in the corner keeping a watchful eye on the punch bowls, Stiles has a good time and spends a disgusting amount of his evening in the bathroom getting presentable.

He's thankfully pimple free and feeling spiffy when he towels off after his shower, slipping into his tux that suddenly makes him feel much older than a goofy boy of eighteen, and when he exits the bathroom his father is waiting for him, apparently at a loss for words when he sees his son in something other than jeans and hoodies. He claps him on the back, tells him he's proud of the man his boy's become, and turns away when the corners of his eyes start watering. Stiles does the same and refuses to mention it later.

He heads over to Scott's house after that, avoiding any puddles and spots of mud that his pristinely shiny shoes—probably the cleanest thing Stiles will ever own if they survive the night without any scuffs or dirt, an unlikely prospect—could possibly fall into, and when he lets himself into the front door Scott's mother is in the middle of taking her thousandth picture of Scott and Allison posing by the staircase. Stiles bombs at least five photographs by buddying up in between the couple and tickling Scott in the ribs when he looks at Allison with a eyes a little too gooey for Stiles' liking, and in the corner of the living with a rather smug smile, Derek watches it all.

Stiles—amazingly, really, considering that it's been two years since he was officially granted permission to have his way with Derek and his body—heats up when he sees Derek, eyes raking up and down Stiles' body while it's snugly confined in an immaculately clean suit like he'd like nothing more than to shove him against the nearest flat surface and make out with him until he doesn't look nearly so prim and precise anymore, and Stiles has half a mind to stalk over to where Derek's standing and mindlessly throw himself onto his chest.

The clicking of the camera, however, and Scott and Derek's mother cooing over how sweet Allison's dress is and how that last photograph is going up on the fireplace mantle _for sure_, grounds him back to reality, and Stiles is left doing nothing to Derek but shooting him a roguish wink when nobody's paying attention.

When the camera turns on him after Scott's photo shoot is finally complete, Stiles burns red on his cheeks while their mother gets equally misty-eyed over how surprisingly grown-up Stiles is when she still remembers him as a second grader who barely reached her hip and takes a few pictures of him as well, all the while lamenting that Stiles couldn't find a pretty girl to go with him.

Stiles doesn't say anything when she mentions that with his knack for humor, he surely could have found himself a charming date, looking instead over her shoulder to where Derek is watching in silence. He feels a surge of anger course through him that makes him, for one crazy second, want to throw a small hissy fit over the fact that he can't loop his arms around Derek's waist and pose with him by the refrigerator, all the while embarrassing him into giggles while he hooks a leg over his knees or sticks a pair of finger antlers behind his head. He knows intrinsically that they would be much better than any of the sickeningly sweet pictures Scott and Allison took that almost gave Stiles a cavity watching.

Their mother ushers them out the door after a few more minutes of crooning and slicking back the stubborn strands of Scott's hair, kissing each of them on the forehead and waving them down the driveway. Allison, her hand clamped firmly in Scott's and wrist dangling with a colorful corsage, sends Stiles a sad little glance of pity after they all climb into the car together, and Scott leans over to mutter, "Sorry, dude," but Stiles still spends the majority of the ride to the school resolutely thinking that if Derek had bothered watching _Queer As Folk_, he'd know to surprise Stiles in the middle of his prom and sweep him away into the middle of the dance floor no matter the rumors that would commence.

When they get to the gym, Stiles is almost instantly bombarded in swarms of gyrating bodies and the accompanying smell of sweat while a few rowdy hooligans pop the decorative balloons over by the bleachers, the DJ playing a fast tune from the front of the gym next to Coach Finstock's watchful eagle eyes roving the gym for anybody dancing a bit too horizontally to be appropriate. They claim a table in the back and then Scott's gone, completely abandoning his best friend duties in favor of shimmying up close to Allison while she's in a dress tight enough to show every nook and bump of her skin, Stiles stuck watching glimpses of the rest of his senior class dancing by in a whir of sequined dresses. He's sulking with his face stuck in a cup of punch when Danny appears in front of him, bow-tie considerably loosened and a look of nearly paternal disappointment painted on his face.

"C'mon, Stiles, get up," he says, and Stiles watches as he extends his hand to Stiles and waits obstinately for him to take it. "I know your boyfriend isn't here tonight but you should at least enjoy yourself."

"Whaaa? I don't, I mean, I'm not—"

"Yes, I know you have a boyfriend," Danny barrels on through persistently, all but sticking his hand under Stiles' nose. "Now get up and dance."

Stiles considers arguing, but he knows well from the experience of having Danny as his lab partner that Danny might be the most insistent kid he's ever met, and when he thinks potassium chloride is the right answer, _potassium chloride will be the right answer_. Through the party lights, he sees Lydia laughing in Jackson's ear and Scott swaying with Allison and decides to give in to the mayhem of prom.

"Okay. But I'm blaming it on the boogie," Stiles says firmly. He gets up, brushes off his pants, and grabs Danny's hands.

Danny turns out to be the best dance partner he could have asked for, because with the influence of a few swallows of Jackson's staple high-school-dance-liquor stash, Danny dances like the lost member of the Jackson 5 and keeps up with Stiles' complete pandemonium on the dance floor without any complaints about his utter lack of coordination and grace. Before the night ends, he tangos with Allison around the length of the gym, solicits Scott for a polka dance-off, and sings along so loudly he loses his voice by the time he pitches himself back into the car at the end of the night.

Stuck under the windshield wiper of his Jeep parked in Scott's driveway is note _Missed you tonight. Hope you had a great time. -D_

* * *

"Where the hell are you?" Stiles demands into his cell phone, sprawled out on his bed with everything but rose petals surrounding him. He peers out of the window to survey the dark driveway and the flickering streetlights as if resolutely hoping that this time, there's a Camaro grumbling up the gravel of the driveway and Derek creeping up the front steps. "My dad left the house half an hour ago and we are totally wasting what could be sexy times."

"Um," Derek says uncomfortably from the other line in the sort of voice that makes Stiles think that he won't be spying a nice car drive up to his house at all tonight. "Something came up."

"Something other than my dick?" Stiles says, looking down at his nightstand where a brand new pack of condoms and lube sit, staring up at him mockingly when a mere minute ago, they were making him tingle in his midsection. "We've planned this for ages, Derek, we haven't have had time to actually be _alone_ together in forever. And sex aside, and _yes_, I might sound like half of an old married couple when I say this, but I'd be happy just to see your face tonight."

"I'm not in California," Derek confesses, and it's the first Stiles has heard of it so he has the decency to sound vaguely sheepish. "I'm in Chicago."

"Chicago? As in, not my house?" Stiles parrots back at him. "Why?"

"Like I said, something came up. Rather unexpectedly," Derek sounds apprehensive, like he's holding back on sharing all of the details. A pregnant pause settles into the air before he decides to expound. "My professor pitched the idea of me studying criminology alongside the Chicago Police Department as a reward for all the research I've been doing and he wanted me to check out the area."

"Why—why would you need to check out the area?" Stiles asks, feeling a tightly-strung ball of dread form in his stomach.

"Well," Derek sounds downright uneasy now. "If I take him up on his offer, I'd move here. For at least a while. It's a really good opportunity."

"And you—you're just mentioning it now?" Stiles asks, feeling rather numb. A part of him points out that if he was a good, supportive boyfriend he would be cheering Derek's endeavors on and telling him exactly how proud he is of his success and that all his hours spent pouring over textbooks in his room and writing term papers will finally pay off, but another part of him selfishly would rather yell if it means that he's about to transition into being one of those couples that feebly attempt long distance. He suddenly wishes Scott were here with him, because Scott would definitely be telling off his brother for his insensitivity right about now and telling him to get his ass back to Beacon Hills or he would go tattle-tale to mom that he's thinking of moving.

"I didn't know myself, Stiles!" Derek persists. "I'll just be checking out the area for a few weeks and then I can think about it more."

"A few weeks?" Stiles' eyes rivet toward the calendar tacked crookedly onto his wall. "What about graduation?"

"I'd… watch the tape."

"You're kidding!" Like a string of nightmares he can't open his eyes from, Stiles imagines having to share his life with Derek through videos on YouTube and grainy Skype conversations. He imagines life whirring by in Chicago while he stays stationary in the mud in Beacon Hills with Scott. Maybe he'd get a dog to keep him company once Scott would leave to go start a family of eight plus with Allison, or maybe he'd become his father's lackey at the station to keep busy. He roughly blinks the images of his potential future away and resists the urge to maim his newly-bought box of condoms in rebellion.

"I'm really sorry about this, Stiles," Derek mumbles, sounding quite small unlike his usual burly and commanding tone of voice. Stiles can drum up no sympathy.

"Yeah, well, me too," Stiles mutters, sweeping the lot of his purchases into his arms to push under the bed and out of sight. "Just so you know, I bought all the condoms and all the flavored lubes you like today for you and waited awkwardly in line at the cashier. My cashier was very judgmental and old and I didn't even tell her it was a for a science project to diffuse the tension, so there, I hope you feel bad about yourself when you see what I do for you!"

"You bought flavored lubes?" Derek asks in a low voice.

"Oh god, don't get turned on, you asshole! I'm mad at you! You deserve the worst boyfriend of the year award!"

"Stiles."

"No! No! Absolutely no changing my mind," Stiles bites his lip and is already on his way to the kitchen to pull out bowls and bowls of his favorite comfort snacks. Right after this, he's calling Scott, and Scott is showing up whether or not he's getting freaky with Allison. Stiles is making no exceptions. "I'm hanging up on you."

"_Stiles_."

Stiles hits the end button before he goes on a rant about how this is not what he had in mind when he agreed to betray his best friend's trust and start a covert affair with his best friend's brother two years ago when he was still naïve and permanently horny and about how he now knows what Taylor Swift must feel like whenever she writes another passive-aggressive break-up song and how he wants the _Die Hard_DVDs he left at Derek's dorm back, but instead he hangs up, instantly calls Scott, and wallows in self-pity and poor hygiene for the next three days.

* * *

Stiles doesn't know what side to put his tassel on.

It's Graduation Day, capitals very much needed because Stiles is freaking out at the prospect of officially turning into an adult, because in the real world he can't use the _I left my essay in my printer_excuse and he certainly can't convince his father that he's feeling too clammy to go to school when he has a test in math class. He fiddles with his robes, adjusts his cap until it's resting at a jaunty angle, and waits for the panic to ebb away.

The plus of freaking out over graduating is that Stiles knows that no matter how much he panics, Scott is panicking at least twice as much. He can imagine him as he whines to his mother to fix his robes and dab the sweat off his forehead, and with that thought in mind, Stiles feels sufficiently better about his state of mind and even slightly amused.

"Are you ready, Stiles?" His father hollers up the stairs, and Stiles takes off the cap. He's ready, he supposes, to grab the diploma and shake his snooty principal's hand and wake serenely off the stage and into the arms of the cruel real world, but he doesn't know if he's ready to do it without everyone he needs to be there too.

Although he'd never admit it or disclose his concerns to his father, he wishes his mother would be here to see him, mostly because Stiles' mom was the best mom ever. He doesn't remember everything about her, just blurs of wavy brown hair, a laugh as infectious as his, and how delicious her hot cocoa was and how sweet her perfume smelled when she kissed him on the temple before she dropped him off to preschool. He knows that his father has it worse, that his father probably remembers all of the little details, like what it felt like to kiss her or talk to her or meet her parents or dance with her at prom. The prom he had to dance at with his best friend and his favorite gay classmate because his boyfriend wasn't going.

Thinking about Derek all the way in Chicago is hard, but thinking about Derek _always_being in Chicago is even harder, him not showing up to Stiles' graduation just the beginning of a very long life where the two of them are running in opposite directions. He thinks about how he'll be in the line with all his friends, how he'll hug Allison and all but tackle Scott and he'll try to hit Jackson in the shin before he leaves if he can, and how his father will be waving at him from the stands, and how Derek won't be there. He doesn't realize until just then exactly how much he pictured Derek in his future until Derek told him he might not be there to experience his future with him.

"Stiles! Hustle, hustle! I know your last name doesn't start with three As in a row but we don't want to miss it when he gets to Stilinski!" Stiles' father yells up the stairs, sounding almost as nervous as Stiles, and Stiles starts hustling.

With or without Derek, he doesn't want to miss this.

* * *

When all of it is over, Stiles doesn't feel any different.

He's glad, really, and he doesn't know what he expected, like that he would sprout a beard the moment he would leap from the stage or that he'd be officially broke and homeless and saddled with adult worries the moment he shook his principal's beefy hand. He feels the same, just as silly, just as young, and just as free.

He's already thrown his cap carelessly into the air and is unable to locate its whereabouts after the toss by the time all the students burst into a mad round of applause, burst into tears, and hug their friends like all of them are about to board crashing planes. The mentality is contagious, and it only takes a few seconds before Stiles is joining in and throwing his arms into the air and hollering like he's skydiving off a cliff. He grabs the person next to him—a girl he's never spoken a word to before in his entire high school career—and pulls her into a bone-crushing hug before he leaps off to find Scott and scream in his face.

He finds his dad right afterward, and they spend a good two minutes locked in a tight embrace while Stiles' father muffles all of his tears in Stiles' sleeve and pretends his boy is still stumbling around his house in diapers instead of prancing around his high school gym with a well-earned diploma. He pulls back and gets a congratulatory pat on the cheek from Scott's mother, even goes out of his way to find Mr. Harris and shake his hand even though he spent the majority of the last four years sulking in detention in his classroom, and then, suddenly, there's Derek.

He feels a bit like he's in that fifteen-minute montage near the end of the movie where a romantic ballad overwhelms all other noise and his life turns into slow motion, Derek wrapping him up in his arms and burying his nose in his neck like he's breathing him in. Stiles clings back just as tightly through his eloquent sputters of, "What—but—I thought you weren't—can't believe you're here, you huge asshole!"

"Didn't want to miss it," Derek mumbles on his ear, and he clings onto Stiles like he doesn't intend on letting go soon even though students are streaming by them left and right. "I'm proud of you."

"You asshole."

"I know."

"You _asshole_! How did you even—"

"Told the Chicago Police Department I had somewhere to be," Derek says, and plants a short kiss under his ear that somehow manages to work as the apology that Stiles was waiting to hear.

"You're being punished! No sex for at least a week!"

"How about we go to the backseat of my car?" Derek murmurs in his ear, and Stiles weighs his options of enduring another hour of sundry classmates he never spoke to much or only ever played with once on the same basketball team in PE class coming up to him to pat him on the back and wish him the best of luck versus tearing all of Derek's clothes off in his Camaro. His no-sex rule seems almost counterproductive already.

"Deal."

* * *

Stiles' graduation gown is far gone and discarded an hour later when he shakes off his father and Scott and ends up sprawled in the backseat of Derek's car, parked discreetly behind a clump of trees in the Beacon Hills reserve while they attempt to break the record of fastest undressing ever to have been accomplished, Stiles' t-shirt already draped over the steering wheel and Derek's jacket sitting forgotten in the foot room. The backseat is too small for them, nothing but a small slippery expanse of cool leather and naked skin, but Stiles doesn't mind a little cramping and a few awkward positions if he gets to spend the next few hours touching Derek, licking Derek, and sucking marks all over Derek without abandon.

"You know, I still haven't completely forgiven you," Stiles admits while he's shimmying out of his pants and admiring the firmness of Derek's ass under his hands, an ass he's definitely missed groping in the past few weeks.

"That's okay," he says, and something vaguely diabolical flits over his feature. "You will."

And he then proceeds to give Stiles the messiest, filthiest blowjob of his life while Stiles grips the seatbelt for support in one hand and a handful of Derek's hair in his other hand.

Derek's mouth, Stiles is convinced, was created purely for the purpose of pornographic eating and blow jobs, mostly because his tongue might as well be classified as a weapon that one needs to use discretion with were they to go headfirst into battle. Stiles lets loose a string of curse words that would have his stick-in-her-ass grandmother rolling in her grave when Derek hollows his cheeks around Stiles' erection and sucks, tongue pressed against the underside of Stiles' cock and fingers rubbing insistently against his puckered entrance. He slides them in with nothing but saliva to ease the way—which Stiles can deal with, considering that it was either that or car wax—and keeps up the steady pace of his mouth working away on Stiles' length, and the sight of him ducked between Stiles' legs combined with the torturous sensations of Derek's fingers rubbing inside him is enough to make him blow his load right there, but right when Stiles starts bucking up into the wet heat of Derek's mouth, Derek pulls back and smiles.

"Forgiven yet?" He asks, looking so evil Stiles might be able to snap a picture of his face and send it into Disney as inspiration for their next heinous villain, and Stiles' head hits the cool window behind him.

"Yeah, yeah, forgiven, keep going."

"Nuh uh," Derek denies, and slows down the pace of his fingers thrusting in and out of his hole to an agonizing pace. "Wanna hear you beg, Stiles."

"Beg for you to please hurry up and fuck me?" Stiles asks, and Derek's eyes flash with poorly veiled lust. Stiles pulls him into a kiss that's all demanding teeth and tongue, using his momentary advantage to push Derek down the seat and position himself over his cock. Derek doesn't seem to be against this change of plans at all, briefly slicking up his dick before he grabs Stiles' hips and lets him slide down until he's sitting on his lap.

It always feels good, but this time it's especially so. Maybe it's because it's been a while since they've done this, or maybe it's because Stiles was starting to believe that Derek being in Chicago meant they wouldn't do this for a good while, or maybe it's just because they're both scrambling for more and not breaking eye contact. Stiles slides down until Derek's biting his own lip and gripping Stiles' hips hard enough to pulverize bone marrow, and the sight of his self-restraint is not nearly as appealing as his pleasure, so Stiles promptly starts rocking up and down on his length.

"Oh, fuck, Stiles," Derek groans, bucking his hips up so his cock slides into Stiles further than before, the stretch and burn of his dick sliding into him so familiar and perfect that it doesn't take long for either of them to come at all. They rock against each other and exchange breathless kisses, and Stiles barely even needs to give his erection a helping hand before he's coming.

The afterglow, however, is cut short and brought to an unexpected halt when in the middle of sharing lazy post-orgasm kisses and tangling their legs together in the limited room of the backseat, the sudden noise of a knock on the back window yanks them from their reverie and from Stiles once again memorizing the smell of Derek's shampoo. They sit up like guilty teenagers caught necking in the backyard after curfew, which Stiles realizes he _is_when he sees that the face of the police officer in the window is his father's, looking gruff and authoritative until he too comes to the realization his son is the one half naked in the back of the car in the middle of the woods right next to his best friend's brother.

"Oh sweet mercy," Stiles murmurs hollowly as he watches the light of recognition flash on his father's face and slowly morph into one of horror as he takes in the faces of the shamefully naked couple and identifies them as familiar ones. "Derek, make sure my grave has something funny on it under my name."

* * *

Sitting in the middle of what might just be the worst family conference of all his life, including the one where Stiles inadvertently was there to listen to Scott and Derek's mother explain that she was getting a divorce, Stiles takes a moment to pray to whatever cosmic deity might be overseeing this particular agonizing portion of his life to make sure he makes it out unscathed. Or alive. He'll settle for just alive.

Across from him sits his father, appearing too baffled to even say a word, and Scott and Derek's mother, lips pursed into nothing but a thin white line of sternness that Stiles knows to mean she's either about to start yelling or she's currently struggling to find the proper method of parenting to deliver when her son and her younger son's best friend are found making out in the back of a car. In between him and Derek, Scott sits like a buffer that Stiles, for once, is incredibly grateful for, except he's avoiding eye contact with everybody and shrunken in on himself like he knows that everybody in the room is ready to interrogate him concerning his involvement for the whole affair or blame him for letting the secret slip when he'd much rather be shut in his room eavesdropping from a safe distance.

Stiles considers looking at Derek for support, just to gauge his reaction to the circumstances, except Derek is staring resolutely ahead like he's either ready to burn a hole through the wall or he's currently filing through mental excuses that dismiss this whole misunderstanding that he must have had at the ready for years just in case the Sherriff one day accosted him for deflowering his virgin son. His hands are clenched into white-knuckled fists on his knees that Stiles sort of wants to grab just to make sure he doesn't accidentally break his own fingers.

Naturally, even though he really doesn't want to be, he's the first to talk. His mouth moves without his permission. "So. Um. How about you take away my computer privileges for a week and we all just forget that this ever happened?"

The whole room collectively ignores him. His father looks more confused than ever when he finally finds the voice to speak once more.

"Maybe… maybe we can talk about how this _even began_?" His father begins meekly, still looking so lost in his own skin, like he would know perfectly well how to deal with this situation if the couple getting to second base in the back of the car was just some rowdy teenagers, but he doesn't have a clue of how to deal with this with his own son at the receiving end of this sort of trouble. Stiles admits that he's a troublemaker and that trouble seems to have taken up permanent albeit rent-free residence under his bed, but this might be slightly worse than listening in to his father's police calls when there's a robbery in occurrence when he should be busy studying in solitude at home.

"Well," Derek starts stiffly. "It just sort of happened, Sherriff."

_Sherriff._ Stiles wants to bury his face in his hands and only peek out between his fingers for the rest of his life. Derek has known his father for years, has made small chat with him over holiday dinners when the Stilinskis came over for celebrations, and yet here he is, acting like he's never laid eyes on the man before. Stiles realizes that Derek, big, strong, built from the hardest of all bricks _Derek_is walking on eggshells. Stiles eyes the nightstick tucked securely into his father's police belt and understands perfectly why.

"Did you force my son to be with you?" Stiles' father asks gruffly.

"No! _No_. It wasn't like that, dad, I was the one who practically jumped him," Stiles interjects.

Scott whines pitifully to the floor. Nobody feels the need to rub him on the back until the nausea and the terror fades away.

"You?" Stiles' father repeats incredulously. "You? I thought you had it bad for that Lydia chick?"

"Who?" Derek intervenes sharply, and really, this is not the time for a streak of jealousy. Stiles ignores him.

"Dad, that was back in seventh grade when I told you about that. I've been going out with Derek since—"

Stiles promptly shuts up. Derek looks very much like he wants to cuff Stiles on the back of the head until he's too dizzy to speak and reveal more incriminating evidence against Derek's rapidly dwindling reputation among the Stilinski household, not to mention his own mother, who looks like she's about ready to burst into tears.

"Since?" The sheriff demands, and when Stiles shuts his mouth and refuses to answer, he rounds on Derek instead. "Son, you and I are gonna be in a lot of hot water together if you're telling me that you touched him before he even made it through the puberty machine!"

"Dad!" Stiles says as the whole situation spins out of control toward a very meek outlook. "Dad, I was sixteen. And it was _me_who was all over the guy. I mean, c'mon, he was ripped and had that oddly attractive broody demeanor and I had a severely neglected sex drive."

"Stiles, _stop talking_," Derek tells him lowly, and that's when the sheriff gets riled up again.

"You control him like that all the time? Back when he was a _minor_, maybe?"

There's a small interlude of hasty yells and a very graceful high-pitched scream from Stiles' end when the sheriff gets up and advances on Derek like he's ready to pummel him into the next week even though he was heartily calling him _son_a good few days ago, pairs of hands pushing him back into his seat on the couch. Stiles keeps his gun-wielding hand in his eye just in case this turns into a hostage situation.

"Scott, did _you _know about this?" Derek and Scott's mother pipes up from the other end of the couch, looking supremely uncomfortable. Scott whines some more and then mumbles a few unintelligible words into his palm.

"He knew," Derek reveals without a beat. Scott howls in shock at that and promptly punches Derek on his shoulder. The sheriff looks slightly satisfied at the abuse.

"Dude!" Scott wails, very much acting like the woeful victim in the entire situation. Stiles has half a mind to start blurting out that Scott carries condom in the back pocket of his jeans at all times because he and Allison are just that insatiable when it comes to devouring each other if only to toss around a few smidgens of blame that might take some of the heat away from him and Derek.

"And you never said anything, Scott?" His mother addresses him.

"Mom, I was just trying as hard as I could not to walk in on them making out! I tried to stay out of it, I did, but I found them making out on the couch two years ago and couldn't exactly ignore it after that!"

"_Two years ago_?!"

"Okay, everybody, listen up!" Stiles calls from where he's being very firmly ignored. Four faces, all ready to combust with a plethora of emotions that all seem that like they'll ultimately end in nausea, turn to Stiles. "I get that everyone's upset! Except for you, Scott, this has nothing to do with you." Stiles adds as an afterthought before barreling back onto track. "And the fact of the matter is that it happened, and, and if I was Marty McFly and I had access to a time machine I wouldn't go back and change it, okay? Derek's right, it was my idea back then and I haven't changed my mind now. So whether or not you like it doesn't really matter, because I'm fine going Romeo and Juliet behind your backs. Well, not the ritual suicide. But the—the whole forbidden love and quarreling families thing—"

"Stiles, shut up," Derek advises in a terse tone that leaves no room for argument. Stiles takes a deep breath and steps off his proverbial soapbox. When he sits back down his father is rubbing his temples like this is all information he'd gladly erase from his brain so he could return to being blissfully oblivious. Mildly, Stiles wonders if this will all feel better tomorrow, like a weight off his shoulders now that the secret's out of the bag and he won't have to endure any more supremely uncomfortable family confrontations from this point onward.

"Okay, kids. Here's the deal," the sheriff finally speaks up after sharing a cryptic glance with Derek's mother. "We won't get in the way of either of you because we know that you're both so stubborn that you'd probably end up rebelling and seeing each other anyway. But _you_—" he points an accusatory finger at Derek, "are gonna do this right. You're not going to treat my son like illegal high school goods, got that? And if I find out that you're abusing him—"

"Dad," Stiles mutters when his cheeks start heating up at the protective speech he thought for sure one day he would be the one to be on the receiving end of when he'd find a girlfriend with a neurotic father.

"—I _will _remind you that I have a license to carry weapons. Uh, no harm intended on your son, Melissa."

"Well, that negated the purpose of that whole speech," Stiles observes dryly, but a good amount of tension uncoils from his innards and lets him breathe again when he realizes that he won't be one of those stereotypical teenagers anymore who has to come up with excuses ranging all the way from _I promised to look after the school hamster for student naturalist extra credit_ to _Scott's been dumped again _every time he sneaks out to see Derek. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the clenched fist on Derek's thigh relax as well.

In the end, they all exchange hugs and apologize to their respective parents for their secrecy—and in Derek's case, for that little bit of pedophilia and what his father crudely refers to as blatant statutory rape—before they're free to go, Derek's mother first cuffing him around the head and threatening to take ownership of the keys to Derek's Camaro if he pulls yet more stunts with underage Stilinski children.

Fortunately, Stiles thinks they're out of the woods for that one.

* * *

After the Backseat Incident, Stiles' father tries much harder than Stiles would have anticipated to whole-heartedly accept Stiles' endeavors and even turns an eye so blind it needs its own seeing-eye dog to get around town to the fact that Stiles was with Derek before he turned eighteen. The day he walks into the station to deliver his father lunch and discovers a small rainbow flag standing proudly on his father's desk by his computer is both one of the best and most embarrassing moments of Stiles' life.

"Oh, dad, not rainbow flags," Stiles moans when he picks up the tiny ornament and twirls the rainbow ribbon in his hand. His father remains completely serious about the decoration and returns it to its spot by his keyboard.

A day after the long-winded family explanation, Stiles had sat down with his father and endured his endless questions concerning where his heterosexuality went and when did Lydia Martin turn ugly and stupid if he's no longer head over heels for her, answering each one with the same answer: he still likes all of those things, whether it be heterosexuality or Lydia Martin, he just happens to like Derek more.

His father's expression looks mildly constipated throughout their whole conversation, like processing the fact that his son is gay for his best friend's older brother is way too similar to a Lifetime movie for him to fully grasp, but eventually he seems to catch on to all of the details and doesn't try to push Stiles in a different direction and merely ends the discussion with a quiet, "your mother would've wanted what you would've wanted, so I do too," that almost makes Stiles bawl like a three-year-old girl.

"Hey, if any of the guys at the station have a problem that my son is gay, they have to deal with the flag," his father says firmly, pointing to the figurine like it's the guardian of gay peace. Stiles shakes his head and hands him his lunch while he sits down to unwrap his own.

"So what's going on with that string of thefts?" Stiles asks around a mouthful of tater tots, pointing to the evidence board behind his father's chair.

"Actually, Stiles," his father says slowly. "I was hoping we could talk about something else. I was hoping we could talk about Derek."

"Oh god. You didn't change your mind about wanting to have him castrated, did you?"

"No! No, I just wanted to know how your relationship is going," he seems to stutter a little bit over the word relationship, but Stiles knows perfectly well that he'd be slipping over the word no matter who it was Stiles was managing to date for over two years. Stiles shrugs.

"It's okay. A little bummed because he wants to leave Beacon Hills, but what can you do, right?"

"Woah, woah, woah. He wants to leave Beacon Hills?"

"Yeah," Stiles mumbles. "His professor offered him the chance to study crime alongside some detectives in Chicago, so he's pretty set on the idea of taking him up on that."

"Crime? I thought he was into mythology."

"He is. But I always told him that he could fight crime with that glare of his and I guess it inspired him," Stiles pauses in the slurping of his milkshake. "Hold on. Is that irony that it's me who basically caused him to think about moving away from me?"

"Stiles, if your boyfriend wants a job he can come here and look over how we do things at the station," his father says slowly, like Stiles is a little intellectually depraved for not having come up with this idea himself. "We're not exactly bursting with help over here."

"Oh my god," Stiles says, and drops his sandwich straight in his lap. Mayonnaise splatters over his jeans and a few tomatoes squeeze away to land on the floor, but he ignores the mess. "Are you serious?"

"And this way I'd be able to keep an eye on him, too. Make sure he's treating you right."

"You're _serious_!" Stiles shoots up from his chair, the weight on his mind lifted like he's back to imagining living with Derek in Beacon Hills alongside Scott as their annoying neighbor who always runs out of milk and a very loud guard dog that sits on their lawn. The strings that were pulling at his heart at the thought of Derek living hundreds of miles away while trying to maintain a relationship through phone calls, then the occasional email, then the utter silence, are loosened and Stiles no longer feels like he always needs to carry his inhaler with him at all times.

Two weeks later, Derek's master's degree is hung up in the sheriff's office, right next to Stiles' diploma, his first grade art project, and the faded picture of Stiles' mother carrying an energetic baby caught in the middle of a cheery wave. Derek slips his hand into Stiles' when he sees it first, Stiles' father pointedly looks away to give them a moment's privacy, and Stiles enjoys the proudest moment of his life.

* * *

"I swear, this is at least the thirtieth staircase we've walked up," Stiles pants around a tower of precariously stacked cardboard boxes secured in his grip while his feet feel for the next step and wait, inevitably, for his clumsiness to make an appearance and for him to go tumbling down all thirty steps like a cartoon character. "I'm not convinced that we're not climbing up the stairs to heaven."

"Well, they won't let you in," Scott says, sounding not even a little out of breath, and when Stiles turns around and catches sight of the scrawled words _clothes_ and _stuffed animals_ on Scott's armful of boxes while he's in the middle of carrying _dishes_ and _textbooks_he realizes that he's definitely been conned into being the mule. "You like sucking dick too much for you to make it past the gates."

"Thanks for that, Scotty," Stiles calls cheerfully over his shoulder when his feet hit the landing of the fourth floor and the crooked numbers _402_catch his eye hanging on the first door down the hall. He cries out in joy at the relief of not having to call his father and tell him that the brand new mugs and plates from Walmart are already out of commission after one day officially out on his own.

They march into their dormitory room—all but practically two squared feet of room for them to share—and drop their boxes, Scott pretending all the while to shake out his exhausted arms. Sitting on the bed enjoying a snack without a care in the world while Stiles lets the oxygen stream back into his lungs is Derek, who almost snorts with laughter at the sight of his boyfriend exhausted after one round up the stairs.

"You're all sweaty," Derek points out. "You haven't even gotten the heavy stuff yet."

"_Maybe_the guy with the Popeye muscles and the daily workout routine could get off his ass and help lift stuff," Stiles says while he flops onto the bed next to him. The dormitory is small, maybe as small as his bathroom was at home, but that's okay. He and Scott will rough it up like pilgrims in one-room-schoolhouses. Scott sits himself on top of the dresser and commences his own snack break even though all he's done in the course of three hours is lift what might as well have been the combined weight of three pillows up to their dorm room.

"I'm good," Derek airily declines. "I think I prefer watching you do the work."

"You just get turned on when you see me all sweaty." Stiles singsongs smugly, snagging Derek's shirt in his thumb to tug him closer on the bed. There are piles of dented boxes piling up in the corner and the room is decorated with nothing but the two beds and dresser that the dormitory supplies in every room, and Stiles knows that they're all omens informing him that he's in for a long day of endless unpacking and heavy lifting that may stretch into a hot night if he doesn't get up and keep busy, but a second later he catches a whiff of Derek's cologne and decides that a few minutes nuzzling Derek's stubble won't hurt anybody's schedule.

"That's because I then have an excuse to take off your clothes," Derek admits without missing a beat. Stiles is about to yank him on top of his chest so he can screw productivity and screw Derek for a bit instead when Scott disgustedly yells, "Ewwww!" from around his water bottle. Derek rolls his eyes and leans over the bed to give Stiles a slow kiss. Scott all but runs from the room.

"It's just too easy with him," Derek murmurs atop Stiles' lips, who snickers and loops his arms around his neck. The air is warm like summer always gets in August, with a promise of mugginess from September that leaves Stiles' forehead beading with sweat and every day tinged with an air of utmost laziness. Stiles already knows what this school year at college is going to be like for him—lots of missing his father, lots of pigging out on candy bars and vending machine snacks, lots of being crammed without a breath of space, lots of all-nighters with Scott, and lots of Derek.

"We haven't christened this dorm yet," Stiles murmurs, already feeling breathless again after just getting the air back in his lungs after hauling himself up what was clearly a good few million steps with boxes obstructing his view when Derek starts sucking marks—actual _marks_that Stiles doesn't have to hide with douchebag scarves anymore when he sees his father—into the crook of his neck. "We haven't had sex on any flat surface in this room."

"That sounds like a challenge," Derek rumbles on his throat, and Stiles' dick jumps to life.

"Nothing you and your master's degree can't handle," Stiles bucks up into Derek's hips and revels in the rewarding groan he hears skip brokenly from Derek's mouth. He cups Derek's cheek and kisses him soundly on the mouth. He pulls back and tries to focus on Derek's eyes or his nose, but he's too close and nothing but a blur of dark stubble and pointy nose, close enough that Stiles feels comfortable murmuring, "I love you," on his lips.

"Hey, hey, hey! That's _my_ bed, you guys! That's so wrong!" Scott's hysterical voice breaks their reverie from the doorway, face petrified and hands about to drop his box of deodorant and shampoo, and Stiles bursts out laughing because he knows that this is what his life will be for the next few years, next few decades, maybe the rest of his life, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

-_fin_


End file.
